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On May 25 and 26, tekMountain hosted representatives of one of the nation’s foremost cannabis consulting firms, Medicine Man Technologies, who delivered, free to the public, a massive amount of information about turn-key solutions within the booming cannabis industry.

Medicine Man Technologies is a Denver-based cannabis consulting firm. Brett Roper, the company’s cofounder and COO, and Carrie Roberts, senior consultant, delivered essential data, perspectives and projections, answered questions, and addressed expectations about the national cannabis industry and its local opportunities. More than 50 people attended Thursday’s crash course, ranging from entrepreneurs and investors to law enforcement and the merely curious. Local TV news station WWAY made the scene as well.

Roper and Roberts returned the next day for a deeper dive into the industry’s legal, regulatory and security issues, business trends and strategies. For those attending it was, in Roper’s words, like drinking from a fire hose.

Among those attending were Matthew Dula, cofounder and CEO of Canna Origin, LLC, a Wilmington-based cannabis-tech incubator and conglomerate. Here on the east coast, Canna Origin specializes in projecting business trends and matching non-THC, federally legal cannabinoids, such as CBD (cannabidiol) hemp oil, and related technologies to businesses in the cannabis movement. Canna Origins’ holdings include the Jade Club, providing CBD by mail in all 50 states, and the Port City Dispensary in Wilmington. The Dispensary is Canna Origin’s entry into educating the public about cannabis while promoting their brand and their CBD products, and to prepare for the eventual legalization of medical or recreational marijuana in North Carolina. (Early this year, the North Carolina legislature authorized an Industrial Hemp Pilot Program.) Canna Origin and its subsidiaries operate fully within state and federal law.

For Dula, the tekMountain event was invaluable. “It’s not every day you get an originator in the industry [Medicine Man Technologies] to come to a non-legal state to do a free conference. The information they delivered definitely has high value,” he said.

Dula referred to the event as a conference because of the breadth and depth of the information shared, covering different aspects of the industry each session. By attending both days, Dula said, one could piece together a North Carolina strategy.

“This was a really good thing [tekMountain] did,” he said, emphasizing that the event was free of charge. “It brought a lot of clarity to people who otherwise had no idea or background for what cannabis operations looks like. They brought in a very knowledgeable company that has their finger on the pulse of industry.”

While tekMountain recognizes that neither medicinal nor recreational marijuana is legal in North Carolina, its mission is to operationalize its entrepreneurial vision of innovation by focusing on collaborative opportunities. And that includes exploring the potential for a nationally developing cannabis industry.

One observation that Brett Roper finds interesting about the cannabis industry is that it’s filled with many “good people who don’t use cannabis,” himself included. The enormous business potential of cannabis is attracting plenty of seasoned professionals, “more than you might expect,” he says, who are looking at cannabis as a reasonable, reputable, and potentially profitable business venture.

tekMountain, the southeast’s premier innovation center, is proud to have sponsored Medicine Man Technologies and welcomes your collaborative input on future business and innovation ventures.